


gonna see you again (on the gold streets, standing next to me)

by agentmmayy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 01:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20183980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/pseuds/agentmmayy
Summary: Melinda gets her chance to see Phil again.





	gonna see you again (on the gold streets, standing next to me)

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a week and i'm still trying to recover from the finale. spoilers for 6x12 and 6x13 if you haven't seen it yet. hope you enjoy!

“You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

Melinda’s eyes snap open. She’s greeted with an almost blinding white light that makes her cringe and lift a hand to shield herself from the brightness. The light is jarring, a complete one-eighty from the dimly lit temple floor she had been dying on what felt like seconds ago.  _ Was  _ she dead? Gentle, warm fingers wrap around her wrist, guiding it away. Melinda squints, trying to focus on the person crouching over her. 

“Phil.” Melinda doesn’t have to ask. She knows this is her Phil. He’s here. “Phil.”

“It’s me, Mel,” he says, reaching for her other hand to help her sit up. Phil pulls her onto his lap, so they’re both sitting on the floor. He smiles, eyes shining with joy and crinkling at the edges in a way only his could. “I’m here. Melinda.”

Her name coming from his lips, and his arms around her cuts through her shock. Melinda clutches Phil close, burying her face against his shoulder as she anchors her hands in his shirt, twisting the fabric. He’s warm against her and even smells the same, that clean soap smell that seemed to permeate everything even after he was gone. It’s him. It’s really him. 

She lets out a choked, wet sob, “I missed you so much.”

Phil ducks his head, kissing just below Melinda’s ear. His voice is thick as he says, “I’ve missed you too.” 

Melinda cries mostly out of relief but also from grief. It was a fickle thing. Melinda knew she would never stop grieving Phil, but she at least thought she had a firmer grasp on it. She scaled one mountain only to fall straight into a valley. Having Phil, or at least something that looked like him, suddenly thrust into her life just as she was starting to heal almost hurt worse than losing him- especially having part of him so cruelly feeding her hope. 

After a few minutes, Melinda takes her face from Phil’s neck but makes no move to climb out of his embrace. Instead, she leans further into him and tilts her chin up, searching for a kiss. Another sob wells in Melinda’s throat when Phil’s lips meet hers. This was home. She reaches up, cupping the side of his face and brings his mouth to hers again and again after each kiss. She’s missed this as well, that fragile, precious intimacy they only had the privilege to explore for a few weeks. With one last kiss, Melinda tucks her head to Phil’s chest, eyes closing briefly in contentment as he kisses her temple.

Her gaze falls to the hand he still cradles her wrist with. It’s Phil’s left hand but without the familiar silver band on the forearm. He’d taken to not wearing it his last few days, but this definitely isn’t the prosthetic. Phil’s wearing the same clothes he died in, an old t-shirt and loose boxers. Melinda glances down to herself for the first time. She’s dressed in what she wore to the temple, minus the bloodstains and gashes. Melinda lifts her shirt up, expecting to see the stab wound but instead, she’s greeted with smooth, unblemished skin. Nothing hurts either. In fact, Melinda has never felt this good. Her leg doesn’t ache with the way she’s sitting. If she checked, Melinda suspects she wouldn’t find any other scars. This was her body, just an unharmed version. 

“Is this heaven?” she asks. 

Phil laughs and kisses the corner of her mouth. “Close enough.”

Melinda looks out before them into the seemingly endless stretch of white. They’re surrounded with it, sitting in a space without walls, a ceiling, and any light source though it remained bright. “It’s different than I imagined.” 

“No pearly gates?” Phil asks, amused. “A suspicious lack of angels and gold streets?” 

She shrugs. “Something like that.” Melinda turns back to Phil, offering a smile which he returns. “But you’re here.”

“Is that what you were expecting?”

Melinda nods, tucking her cheek against Phil’s chest. He kisses the top of her head, cradling it. “It’s so good to see you again,” she whispers. “The real you.”

“Yeah,” Phil says. “I can’t imagine seeing someone else with my face was easy.”

Just the thought of Sarge makes Melinda grit her teeth. She wishes she had been able to run that same sword through him instead of Izel. But at the same time, Melinda knows she wouldn’t have been able to kill him, not when he still looked like Phil. “You saw what happened?”

“Everything.” He sighs. “I’m so sorry, Mel.”

“He- it had a part of you,” Melinda tells him. “I thought- I thought if I could get through to it, you’d come back. That maybe there was a piece of you in it that could be saved.” 

“I won’t be coming back,” Phil says. “Not all of me, at least. I’m sorry.” 

“I just wanted to see you again,” she admits quietly. 

“And you decided the best way to do that was by getting yourself killed?”

Well, she certainly hadn’t planned on  _ that  _ though it had been at the back of her mind. “It was stupid. I should have been more careful.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But you think I wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

He would have. Phil always saw the good in everyone. It was both his best and worst quality. 

“It’s been so hard without you, Phil,” Melinda says. “Especially for Daisy.”

Phil softens, eyes taking on a certain sadness. “Daisy. I miss her. She talks to me sometimes.”

“She misses you too.”

“I know.”

“Is this really heaven? Or the afterlife?” Melinda asks, glancing at the never-ending stretch of white. She thought other people she lost would be here; Trip, Izzy and Victoria, Andrew. “It seems lonely.”

“It’s an in-between place. Heaven, or wherever, is much more crowded.”

She opens her mouth to ask what exactly he means but stops when a voice that isn’t Phil’s reaches her ears.  _ May! _ Melinda sits up. Someone is calling her, but she can’t tell who. It’s still too far away.  _ May!  _ Melinda frowns. “You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It-” She glances around, trying to locate the voice that keeps frantically calling but there’s no one there. It gets louder.  _ May! May, please!  _ “It sounds like Daisy.” Melinda feels a sudden sense of dread overtake her. She turns back to Phil. “Is she here?”

He shakes his head, a knowing smile on his lips. “No, she’s not here. She’s talking to you. You’re not fully gone, Mel.”

“I’m not dead?” Melinda asks, confused. “But how?”

“Jemma’s trying to bring you back. You really think they’d let you go that easily?”

“I was impaled through the stomach,” she says, one hand drifting to the spot where the sword went through and where she pulled it from. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

Phil chuckles. “I was impaled too but turned out alright.”

“With the help of alien blood. We don’t have any of that.”

“Jemma found something better. Honestly, I’m a little jealous,” he teases. “At least you won’t have to have invasive brain surgery.”

So she isn’t dead. At least not yet. Melinda curls closer to Phil as if suddenly terrified he would disappear. “But,” she begins hesitantly, palm pressing to his chest. “What if I don’t want to leave you?”

“It’s your choice,” Phil says. “You can stay here or go back.”

“Is that what you decided?”

He smiles sadly, stroking her hair. “I didn’t have a choice this time.” 

It was relieving to know that Phil didn’t leave her on his own accord. Melinda aches to stay but at the same time, grapples with the decision. Did she really want to go back to life without Phil in it? She’d done it before- twice now- but could she do it again? After all she went through, hadn’t she deserved a chance to finally rest?

Daisy’s voice grows louder, her cries and pleading tearing right through Melinda’s heart. She has to go back for Daisy. But, Melinda realizes, she has to go back for herself too. She had another chance, one that Phil didn’t. It wasn’t her place to waste it. 

“Will you still be here?” she asks, pulling away to look at him. “When it’s my time?”

Phil nods. He cups her cheek, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’ll be here, but I better not see you around anytime soon.” 

Melinda musters a smile even as her eyes well up. “I’ll miss you.”

Phil kisses her cheek right as a tear falls. “I’ll miss you too.”

_ May! _ This time it’s so loud, Melinda automatically turns, trying to find Daisy. Around them, the white expanse glows brighter. Her pulse begins to race. This is it. This is her last chance to change her mind. This is her last chance to see Phil. She looks back to him, mouth opening, but no words come out. She doesn’t even know where to begin. How do you say goodbye again? 

“Sounds like you better get going,” Phil says. He falls quiet, listening to Daisy’s voice as it fades. His eyes are misty. “Tell her I love her?”

“I will.” The glow becomes even brighter. Time is almost up. “Say it again?”

“I love you.” 

“I love you too,” Melinda says quickly, biting back a sob. “I always will. I love you.”

Phil smiles and presses his lips to her forehead. Melinda closes her eyes, clasps a hand to his neck, brings their joined hands to her chest, tries to remember this. “Bye, Mel.” 

Melinda hugs him tight one last time with tears slipping down her cheeks. “Goodbye, Phil.” 

The white glow envelopes her. Much to her surprise, Melinda doesn’t have the urge to reach out to Phil as he disappears. She’ll see him again, just not for a while. Once again, the light becomes so bright Melinda squints in pain. When it recedes, she opens her eyes again, for a moment fearing she’s still in that place with Phil from the light around her, but then a room comes into focus. She’s back. She’s alive. 

There’s a hand holding hers and a familiar figure to her left. Melinda winces as she turns her head, managing to whisper, “Daisy.”

“May!” Daisy jerks upright in the chair she was dozing in, pulled next to Melinda’s bed. She leans toward her, keeping Melinda’s hand in a tight grip. “May. Hey,” she says. “You’re awake. I almost lost you.”

“Daisy,” Melinda repeats, voice raspy with disuse. Daisy shifts off to the side before returning with a cup of ice chips. She feeds a few to Melinda who sucks on them gratefully, wetting her dry lips. 

“Are you okay?” Daisy asks, eyes flitting over Melinda in concern. “Does anything hurt? You need me to get Simmons?”

“I saw him,” Melinda breathes, effectively stopping Daisy’s barrage of questions. “Coulson.”

“Y-you did?”

She nods. “He was there- waiting.” Melinda blinks back the tears gathering in her eyes and manages a wobbly smile. “He asked me to tell you he loves you. He misses you.”

Daisy’s lower lip wobbles before she carefully tucks her face into Melinda’s neck, wetting her skin and hair with tears. Melinda weakly lifts a hand to the back of Daisy’s head, resting it there as she cries. She carefully turns to press her lips to Daisy’s hair. This is why she came back.

Now that Melinda isn’t in that place and she’s beginning to wake up, she realizes the consequences of her decision. Her entire body is bright with pain, especially her stomach. They’re going to have to save the world again. Eventually, she’ll lose someone else she loves. She’s going to live the rest of her life missing Phil, going about her days with the same ache in her chest that will hopefully fade as the years pass. But Melinda doesn’t regret her decision even the slightest bit. This is where she’s meant to be, at least for now. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
